Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader (15 page)

THE MYTH:
The framers of the U.S. Constitution saw it for the great document that it was.

THE TRUTH:
A lot of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention hated it. So many compromises had to be made in order secure agreement that many participants viewed it, as Alexander Hamilton put it, “a weak and worthless fabric.” Fifteen delegates refused to sign it, and even the Constitution’s biggest supporters saw it as little more than a stopgap measure—after a few years passed, new delegates could meet at another convention and try to pass something better.

THE MYTH:
The founding fathers believed in democracy.

THE TRUTH:
“The Founding Fathers, that is, the men who framed the Constitution, disagreed about many things,” writes Paul Boller in
Not So!
, “but on one point they were in complete agreement: that democracy meant mob rule and if unchecked, it would pose a grave threat to life, liberty and property....There was nothing
unusual in the Founding Fathers’ distrust of democracy; it was conventional wisdom in the 18th century. Even well into the 19th century, in the United States as well as Western Europe, the word ‘democracy’ had an unsavory connotation, especially among conservatives.”

THE MYTH:
The United States came very close to making German the official language of the country.

THE TRUTH:
For some reason, history books occasionally report that German missed being designated our language by
one vote
at the Continental Congress. The reason they give: Colonists wanted to put as much distance between themselves and England as possible. Actually, dumping English was never considered—in fact, it’s an absurd notion. By 1790, 90% of the white population of the U.S. was of English descent. “The only known occasion on which German was ever an issue was in 1795,” Bryson writes, “when the House of Representatives briefly considered a proposal to publish federal laws in German as well as in English as a convenience to recent immigrants, and the proposal was defeated.”

THE MYTH:
Samuel Morse invented the telegraph in 1844.

BACKGROUND:
That was the version that Morse liked to tell.

THE TRUTH:
Morse did invent Morse Code, but the telegraph itself was invented in 1831 by a Princeton University professor named Joseph Henry, who never bothered to patent it. Morse’s telegraph was based largely on Henry’s design. Morse “not only stole lavishly from Henry’s original papers,” Bryson writes, “but when stuck would call on the eminent scientist for guidance. For years, Henry encouraged and assisted his efforts. Yet later, when Morse had grown immensely famous and rich, he refused to acknowledge even the slightest degree of debt to his mentor.”

THE MYTH:
The first message sent by Morse Code was, “What hath God wrought?”

THE TRUTH:
Morse’s first message was, “Everything worked well.” It wasn’t until a later public demonstration that the message, “What hath God wrought?” was sent. Morse didn’t even choose the words: the daughter of the Commissioner of Patents did that.

Here are more origins of everyday phrases.

K
IT AND CABOODLE

Meaning:
All of something; the whole thing.

Origin:
“The Dutch word
boedel
means ‘effects’—what a person owns. Robbers, especially housebreakers, adopted the term—calling whatever they stole ‘boodle.’ They carried their burglar’s tools in a ‘kit.’ If they were able to enter a house, gather up everything valuable, and make a clean escape, they said they had gotten away with ‘kit and boodle.’ In time, the phrase was shortened to ‘caboodle’—the ‘ca’ standing for the ‘kit.’ The ‘kit’ was reintroduced into the phrase—probably for emphasis.” (From
Why Do We Say It
, by Webb Garrison)

GUINEA PIG

Meaning:
The subject of an experiment; the first person to try something untested.

Origin:
“This small South American rodent first came to Europe in the 17th century and was either misnamed ‘guinea’ (Guinea being in West Africa) for Guiana (in South America) or it was named for the Guineamen, slave traders who took blacks from Guinea to the West Indies and then conveyed a variety of goods from the Indies and North America to Britain.

“In the 19th century ‘guinea pig’ became British slang for a person of standing who allowed his name to be put on a company’s roster of directors for a fee paid in guineas, but who was not active in the company.” In the 20th century, guinea pigs “came to be widely used in scientific and medical experiments—leading to the transfer of the name to the subject of any kind of experiment.” (From
It’s Raining Cats and Dogs
, by Christine Ammer)

(TO GIVE—OR GET) THE THIRD DEGREE

Meaning:
An intense and sometimes brutal grilling to get information from someone.

Origin:
“The term ‘third degree’ has no connection with criminality
or brutal treatment....It refers to the third and final stage of proficiency demanded of one who seeks to become a master Mason...

Before the candidate is fully qualified for the third degree he must undergo a very elaborate and severe test of ability. It is from this examination that ‘third degree’ became applied to the treatment of prisoners by the police, and it was through the fact that the police sometimes did employ brutality in efforts to extort confession or information that our present expression obtained its common modern meaning.” (From
Heavens to Betsy!
, by Charles Earle Funk)

A SPINSTER

Meaning:
An older, unmarried woman.

Origin:
“Until spinning was mechanized in the late eighteenth century, turning wool or flax into yarn or thread was almost always ‘woman’s work.’ A spinster was a woman spinner—often a professional; in the seventeenth century, it came to mean an unmarried woman—presumably because, having neither husband nor children, she could devote herself full-time to her spinning.” (From
The Book of Lost Metaphors
)

TO BLACKMAIL SOMEONE

Meaning:
To extort money from someone.

Origin:
“Blackmail has nothing whatever to do with the post office. Black is used in the figurative sense of ‘evil’ or ‘wicked.’ Mail is a Scots word meaning ‘rent’ or ‘tribute.’ The term ‘blackmail’ originated in Scotland, where Highland chiefs at one time extorted tribute from Lowlanders and Englishmen on the Scottish border in return for protection from being plundered.” (From
Word Mysteries & Histories
, by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries)

THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT

Meaning:
A night shift for workers.

Origin:
It wasn’t coined by morticians, but by shipbuilders. “The name originated during World War I, when for the first time shipbuilders and munitions workers found it necessary to work ‘round the clock in order to produce enough for the war effort. It is still used today for any shift covering the midnight and early morning hours.” (From
Fighting Words
, by Christine Ammer)

Here’s more real-life courtroom dialogue.

Q:
“Do you remember what shoes you were wearing?”

A:
“You mean the day I fell down?”

Q:
“Yes.”

A:
“The same shoes I’m wearing.”

Q:
“What do you call those shoes? Are they flats...or how would you describe them?”

A:
“I’d describe them as ‘these shoes.’”

Q:
“Please review this document. Do you know what a fax is?”

A:
“Yeah, I do, man. It’s when you tell the truth, man, tell it like it is. That is what the facts is.”

Q:
“What is the relationship?”

A:
“She’s my aunt.”

Q:
“Who’s brother or sister to whom here?”

A:
My mother is his brother—is her—my mother is—what is it? By marriage, I guess you would say. My mother is her brother—is his brother by marriage, so she’s just an aunt.”

A:
“You know, I don’t know, but I mean, you know—you don’t know but you know. You know what I’m saying?”

Q:
“Do I? No. Do I know? No.”

Q:
“You assumed narcotics in reaching your opinions.”

A:
“Yes.”

Q:
“You didn’t assume a Frito or a Chee-to or a banana. You assumed narcotics.”

A:
“It was a narcotics raid. It wasn’t a Frito raid, counselor.”

Q:
“So you remember who the doctor was who performed that?”

A:
“Yes. Very easy name to remember, Mee.”

Q:
“Martin?” (The witness’s name.)

A:
“No, Mee.”

Q:
“You?”

A:
“That was his name.”

Q:
“Me?”

A:
“Mee.”

Q:
“M-e?”

A:
“M-e-e. That was his name, Dr. Mee.”

Q:
“Mr. Jones, do you believe in alien forces?”

A:
“You mean other than my wife?”

Q:
“Were you acquainted with the decedent?”

A:
“Yes, sir.”

Q:
“Before or after he died?”

Q:
“Did he ever kill you before?”

A:
“Pardon me?”

We all know these names—many are a part of our everyday lives. But where did they come from?

S
EALY MATTRESS.
In 1881, an inventor from Sealy, Texas developed a cotton-filled mattress. Word spread around the Southwest, and people began asking for the “mattress from Sealy.” Eventually it became known simply as the “Sealy mattress.”

SAMSONITE LUGGAGE.
Named after Samson, the biblical strong man, to symbolize “strength and durability.”

DORITOS.
Rough translation from Spanish: “little bit of gold.”

SANYO.
Means “three oceans” in Japanese. Toshio Iue, who founded the company in 1947, planned to sell worldwide—across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

HUSH PUPPIES.
At a dinner in 1957, Jim Muir, sales manager for Wolverine World Wide, Inc., was served tiny fried balls of corn dough known in the South as “hush puppies.” When he wondered about the name, his host explained that local farmers used the food to quiet barking dogs. Muir decided it was a perfect name for a new pigskin shoe his company was developing. The reason: the shoe “could soothe a customer’s aching feet, a.k.a. their ‘barking dogs.’”

AMANA.
In 1854, a German religious sect moved to Iowa and founded the Amana Colonies. Nearly a century later (1932) George Foerstner, a member of the group, started a business making freezers. It was run by the Amana community under their own brand name until 1943, when they sold it to back Foerstner. He kept the name.

MINOLTA.
A loose acronym for Machinery and INstruments OpticaL by Kazuo TAshima (founder of the Japanese-German Camera Company). The first Minolta-brand camera was introduced in 1932.

This started out as a “How did the cheeses get their names?” page. Then we found out that most of the cheeses we’re interested in are named for the places they were first made. So here’s what we wound up with, for you cheeseheads.

B
RIE.
In 1815, following the Napoleonic Wars, diplomats at the Congress of Vienna were served Brie; they enjoyed it so much they pronounced it the King of Cheeses. Birthplace: a northeastern region of France known as (surprise) Brie.

PARMESAN.
A hard, well-aged cheese named after the Italian city of Parma (where it is called
parmigiano
).

COLBY.
A granular cheese first made in Colby, Wisconsin at the end of the 19th century.

CAMEMBERT.
Originated in the village of Camembert in France’s Normandy region. To test the ripeness of Camembert, touch your eye with one finger and the cheese with another. If they feel the same, the cheese is ripe.

LIMBURGER.
Created by Trappist monks in the Belgian town of Limburg.

CHEDDAR.
The world’s most popular cheese. Gets its name from the village of Cheddar in Somerset, England, where it was first produced in the 16th century.

GOUDA.
A compressed sphere of cheese named for the Dutch town of Gouda.